History

The Story of Camden Town

History

Ted and Willy Walters live in a terraced house just near Camden station
and gave this interview in their brilliantly decorated kitchen. A pink
flamingo hung on the wall behind them as Willy's clothes mannequins
stood proudly by the sofa. Ted is an interior designer and work
includes 'Seditionaries', Malcom McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's
Pioneering shop on the King's Road. Ted wore a small knitted hat as we
all drank very large measures of vodka with a dash of tonic. Willy has
very beautiful auburn hair which combines with her red lip-stick to
give her a glamorous yet approachable look.

Willy: My sister Veronica went to Somerset House last week and looked
up the census for 1881. She discovered that in that year there were
three families living here and they were letting rooms out! There's
only us here now and we've built an extention.
They were built for respectable working people, people who worked in
the false teeth factory or on the railways.

Ted: And now they're all media people who drink vodka, smoke dope and
hang around.
Last time we were interviewed was when the police came round here after
we had 20,000 pounds worth of Steve Jones hats stolen out of the back
of the car.

W: We were on the way to a fashion show of Ghost clothes in New York
and we went to dinner at Belgo and left the car just by The
Roundhouse.

T: Every single goddamn window had been broken and they'd taken all
these bloody hats and I was on a flight to New York at 7.00 in the
morning.

W: We spent the whole night trying to get more hats, ended up driving
down to somewhere in South London.

T: I spent the whole time just looking over people's walls hoping to
see the suitcase. What would you do if you'd taken this suitcase,
opened it up and it's full of mad hats? If you're some villain from the
local council estate you're going to sell them on so I was hoping to
see people sitting around with these mad creations on their
heads.

There used to be a place they called Penguin's Corner next to the
station and me and a friend used to go down and watch while the Paddys
waited there to be picked up for a days work. It was when they were
building the M4 and Murphy's used to pick them up and they'd work for a
week. The next week though, they'd work for Alfred Kemp Suits, so after
a weekend in the pubs drinking and getting duffed up, they'd stand on
Penguin's Corner in these black suits and white shirts swaying forward,
leaning over in suits with a broken nose looking just like
penguins.
Then the trucks would turn up and say, "We'll have you Penguin and you
Penguin" and they'd be stinking of alcohol in the early hours of the
morning, barely able to stand up and we used to go down there to
watch.